Privacy Concerns on the Internet

I was surprised to read that there are rumours that the criminal (please read the article here before continuing) may have learned the hostages names via myspace.com.

Fast fact -> Myspace.com is a site where you make your own personal profile and enter your interests into it -> music, movies, whatever, as well as make postings (ala blogging). You can also identify yourself via where you live, what high school you went to, etc. Danny and Carol showed me Myspace.com when I was up there visiting and it was neat to see how many people went to our old high school. Also, the big thing about myspace.com is the linkages between friends that you can make. There is a list of who you consider your ‘friends’.

Other than that, I don’t know much about myspace as I haven’t really used it before. I prefer my own blogspace for my rants, whereas some people just like to use myspace!

Back to the point of the story, if the rumours are true and the killer found out the identities of these young girls via myspace.com, this will unleash a MAJOR backlash in terms of privacy issues on the Internet. The Internet has long been a place mixing anonymity (think nicknames, chatrooms, etc.) with highly personalized information (myspace.com, blogs in general, your photos on-line). Granted, it’s the user’s choice as to how much information they provide, but I don’t think that the users of the Internet are really informed on how much privacy there is out on the Internet.

I have had a lot of experience dealing with privacy issues and youth. My job (as I started out) as a moderator of a message board of youth across the nation. There were always privacy concerns, and we ensured that there were no personal information exchanged on this message board for the public eye to see.

There needs to be more information drilled into the youth, and even us adults as to how much information we should really be placing on the Internet. Even I start thinking about what information I should be putting on a blog. At no time do I ever put someone’s full name on my blog. Not even my own. But if someone really wanted to dig down and found out where I lived, it would be extremely easy considering the landmarks I speak about, the restaurants I go to, etc. Or, I bet they could figure out what my first name and last name are by reading a few dozen posts even though I never place the two words together.

We, as bloggers, should be more conscious of what we place in our entries and, even though it goes against the whole concept of the Internet, should learn to censor ourselves. I read somewhere that someone once said that you should never post anything on the Internet that you couldn’t tell your own mother. 😉 This handles the whole ’embarassing picture’ scenario, but what about someone saying ‘never post anything that could lead someone to your home.’ This is a serious matter.

I had an interesting call the other day from Holly in which she wanted us to change a blog entry on a sister site because it used her full name and someone had discovered the ‘I heart Hollyisms‘ site via Google one day. Sure, it’s fun to have a few laughs, but what if a potential job employer decided to Google Holly’s name and found out all the funny things she has said over the years. It could affect her job. Or, at the very least, get her the promotion as everyone will see what a great person she is. 😉

I don’t think it will be the last we see on this subject. I think in the next coming weeks there will be a major retaliation against the Internet and its privacy amongst youth. What we should focus on, my faithful readers of Palmer’s World, is to think about how much information you post about yourself, and if you are comfortable with it. I personally know that I am comfortable with what I post about myself, but if I ever mention any of you and you feel that you are not comfortable with the amount of information I have relayed, please let me know and I will edit accordingly.

As this moment though, I’m thinking of a few things that I’m going to continue to do:

• Not post anyone’s full names.
• Not post anything about specific mailing addresses or phone numbers, email addresses, etc.

Other than that, I’m sure there’s a SLEW of things I should do to increase the amount of privacy on this blog…but at the same time, I am comfortable with people knowing that my favourite bar is the Heart and Crown. 😉

I’m not writing this to scare anyone, but perhaps everyone should take a step back and really look at what information they are posting on the Internet. If the rumours prove true, and a girl was shot in the head because of her information on a Myspace profile, then everyone has to stop and think for a moment. If you have children who are on the Internet, talk to them about this and make them realize that by typing in what high school they attend, what could be the consequences. It’s an extreme example, but it’s an extreme case that just happened.